First Look At THE COLOR OVER OCCAM Limited Edition

Here is a first look at THE COLOR OVER OCCAM by Jonathan Thomas (signed limited edition hardcover)

We are only producing 150 of the signed limited edition hardcover. If you would like to get more information and reserve your copy just click on any of the pictures below.

 

Book with dust jacket

Book without dust jacket showing foil stamping:

 

Color endpapers:

 

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About this title:

Gorman County disappeared decades ago when floodwaters rose to fill a reservoir. So why should the ghosts of drowned villages resurface only now, in a new century? And what does the reservoir have to do with the grisly deaths, disease, and disappearances stalking the benighted little town of Occam?

Amateur paranormal sleuth Jeff Slater poses these innocent questions, only to encounter hostility, intimidation, and violence wherever he turns. In this saga of Lovecraftian horror, noirish detection, and festering corruption, Slater comes to understand how little he ever knew of his hometown’s macabre history and its bizarre present. Meanwhile, those who do know of Occam’s sinister past warn him with one voice: unearthly doom is on its way. Run or die. But Slater can’t abandon his search for the truth so easily. Can he alter the fate of a town facing cosmic annihilation without destroying himself?

This is the second in our Modern Mythos Series edited by S. T. Joshi and Larry Roberts. The Modern Mythos Series is dedicated to finding the best modern lovecraftian fiction being written today by both veteran and new talented genre authors.

Cover and interior art by Alex McVey

Foreword by S. T. Joshi

One of only 150 signed and numbered hardcover copies.

Lovecraft and Religion

 

To me it has always seemed odd that a person with such a deep and rich mythology in their writing to have little regard for religion, so I like many other Lovecraft fans always look for a peek into the mind of the master, particularly when it comes to religion and cosmology. Joel Furches touches on these in his very interesting new article H.P. Lovecraft and the horror of Naturalistic Materialism

 

“Life is a hideous thing, and from the background behind what we know of it peer daemoniacal hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold more hideous. Science, already oppressive with its shocking revelations, will perhaps be the ultimate exterminator of our human species — if separate species we be — for its reserve of unguessed horrors could never be borne by mortal brains if loosed upon the world.”
-H.P. Lovecraft, The Facts Concerning the Late Author Jermyn and His Family, 1925

Howard Phillips Lovecraft is considered among many to be the father of modern horror. He wrote his short stories of “Weird Fiction” during the 1920’s and 30’s, and captured a unique flavor of horror that writers have been trying to imitate ever since. Movies such as The Thing and the current film Prometheus have borrowed themes and concepts that Lovecraft originated.

What was so unique about Lovecraft’s writing? There are two common themes that run throughout Lovecraft’s work. The first is what has come to be known as ‘Cosmic Horror,’ that is, the concept that man is just an insignificant speck in a vast, uncaring, unknowable, and hostile universe. In story after story, Lovecraft’s protagonists open some door, find some secret into the larger universe, and their response is despair and insanity:

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”
-H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu, 1926

The second theme is related to the first: the horror of heritage. That is to say, when one considers one’s origins, that humanity is nothing more than soulless, animated ooze; that human beings are just a link in a meaningless chain that contained all the lowest beasts, the natural reaction is, again, horror and despair.

Lovecraft himself had a dim view of religion. Like the New Atheists, Lovecraft felt that religion was responsible for more bad than good, more damage than help:

“Bunch together a group of people deliberately chosen for strong religious feelings, and you have a practical guarantee of dark morbidities expressed in crime, perversion, and insanity.”
-H.P. Lovecraft, from his personal letters

In many of his stories, most notably “The Shadow over Innsmouth” organized religion is just a façade for sinister indoctrination and a willful blindness to reality:

“If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences.”
H.P. Lovecraft, from his personal letters

For on this article click here.

True Story: Indian Rajah Raised From the Dead in 1909

Not quite a real life zombie, but proof reality can be weirder than horror fiction.

Rises From Pyre to Seek Estate
2 May 1946

The Spokesman-Review (AP) London, May 1. – The privy council received today a lawsuit over an Indian estate as large as England between a man representing himself as the owner who survived the flames of a funeral pyre in 1909 and a woman who claims the estate as the owner’s widow.

The hearing is before the privy council, Britain’s highest judicial authority.

The case has been argued before the Indian courts for a quarter of a century. It involves holdings yielding $400,000 annually.

More than 100 witnesses have testified about the strange fate of the Rajah Kumar of Bhowal, who was reported to have “died” at Darjeeling May 8, 1909.

The appeal to the privy council was made by the rajah’s “widow,” the Ranee Bibhahati. The defendant is a man whom the highest Indian court has held to be the rightful owner of the estate.

To the satisfaction of the Indian court he established his identity as the rajah. He said he was placed on a funeral pyre, but that while the flames rose a torrential rain drove the mourners to shelter. The downpour revived him, he testified, and he was rescued by passing beggars.

The next 12 years, he said, he spent in wandering while suffering from a loss of memory. Then , he said, he recovered and began the battle to regain his fortune.

The ranee insists she does not recognize him.

Her appeal tot he privy council is for a ruling establishing her widowhood and claim tot eh rajah’s fortune as her inheritance.

New, Rare and Notable

In stock and shipping:

HIS NAME WAS DEATH by Fredric Brown (Signed Limited Edition Hardcover)

This is an advanced order.

Any lucky amateur can do away with family. But it takes a professional to kill an almost perfect stranger. Fiendishly convoluted, His Name Was Death is a tale of geometrically multiplying homicides and a foolproof murder whose repercussions keep spreading to consume victim after victim.
Wickedly funny, His Name Was Death is widely considered to be one of Fredric Brown’s best suspense novels. This edition features a new introduction by Ed Gorman, a color cover by Gwabryel, and is signed by Gorman and Gwabryel.
Full color dustjacket on Mohawk Carnival Felt with black Brillianta cloth, ribbon marker, and a return of our full color illustration inlay on the front board. Each signature page has a drawing by Gwabryel.

Limited to 200 copies, each signed by Ed Gorman and illustrator Gwabryel.
Introduction by Ed Gorman.
Includes two bonus short stories.
Gwabryel has drawn a remarque on each of the signature pages.
Ribbon marker, color dustjacket, head and tail bands, rayon cloth construction and a full-color image inlay on the front board

 

The Dreams of Cardinal Vittorini and Other Strange Stories by Reggie Oliver (Signed Trade Paperback)

Variety and originality of setting, strength of characterisation, stylistic elegance and narrative power are qualities for which Reggie Oliver has become well-known in his five volumes of ‘strange stories’. All are present in this groundbreaking debut volume, first published in 2003. It was a nominee for best collection of 2003 in the International Horror Guild Awards.
A doomed relationship in a seaside town that persists after death. . . . A convent in which there is always the unacknowledged presence of an extra nun. . . . A balding actor who acquires a mysterious wig after his rival goes missing. . . . A brilliant inventor who becomes trapped inside his own sinister computer game. . . . A sixteenth-century cardinal who is tormented by dreams of the sect he has persecuted.

Reggie Oliver is an English playwright, biographer and writer of ghost stories. His work has appeared in a number of anthologies, including the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror.
The Dreams of Cardinal Vittorini and Other Strange Stories contains: “Author’s Note”, “Beside the Shrill Sea”, “Feng Shui”, “In Arcadia”, “Evil Eye”, “Miss Marchant’s Cause”, “Tiger in the Snow”, “Garden Gods”, “The Black Cathedral” ,”The Boy in Green Velvet”, “The Golden Basilica”, “Death Mask”, “The Seventeenth Sister”, “The Copper Wig”, “The Dreams of Cardinal Vittorini”.

The Dreams of Cardinal Vittorini and Other Strange Stories is a paperback of 333 pages, printed lithographically.

 

Some Edward Lee Rarities!

MASKS by Edward Lee and Jack Ketchum (Signed Deluxe Lettered Edition)

A beautiful and very rare copy of the Lettered Edition of MASKS by Edward Lee and Jack Ketchum.

This is a very rare “PC” copy of the hardcover lettered edition of MASKS. This edition is also inscribed on the title page by Jack Ketchum and signed “Dallas” his real name rather than his pseudonym Jack Ketchum. This edition is also signed by Edward Lee, and illustrator Erik Wilson.

Book is in fine unread condition.

OF PIGS & SPIDERS by Edward Lee, John Pelan, David Niall Wilson, Brett Savory (Signed Deluxe Lettered Edition)

One of only 52 signed lettered edition hardcover copies. This is letter “II” of 52. This copy is signed by all contributors. Book is in fine unread condition.

For Mature Audiences Only. These two tales take an untraditional look at cute and cuddly barnyard animals. Wilson and Savory’s “That’s Some Pig” combines a dysfunctional family, stuffed animals, disembowelment and green jello. Lee and Pelan’s “Charlie’s Web” poignantly deals with Chaldean sorcery, alternative sex practices, and a plumber’s nightmare in a white trash hell. Not for the squeamish. Barf bag not included.

 

KILL THE ENEMY and BOMB by Edward Lee (2 volume slipcased hardcover edition)

Hardcover set consists of two separate chapbooks, “Bomb” and “Kill the Enemy”, with the extra story “Driving”, housed in a custom slipcase and limited to 75 copies.

Both books are numbered 15 of 75 and are housed in a custom slipcase.

Bomb -and- Kill the Enemy by Edward Lee
Cover Art by Glenn Chadbourne

The next chapbooks in our chapbook line…..
The first, “Bomb” is Ed Lee’s first, last and only Love Story!
The second chapbook, “Kill the Enemy”, a wonderful never-before-published story about the horrors of war. The second chapbook also includes an extra story only available in the hardcover edition entitled “Driving”

 

Humbugging

I cannot reveal the details of our shocking expeditions, or catalogue even partly the worst of the trophies adorning the nameless museum we prepared in the great stone house where we jointly dwelt, alone and servantless. Our museum was a blasphemous, unthinkable place, where with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had assembled an universe of terror and decay to excite our jaded sensibilities. H. P. Lovecraft, The Hound.

In the history text, Waking Giant: America In The Age of Jackson (by David S. Reynolds, p. 224 ff) there is a summary of the career of Phineas T. Barnum, a failed newspaper editor and failed businessman. In 1841 he came upon the idea of a lifetime when he purchased a New York museum. Having watched the 1840 presidential election – one notoriously filled with flim-flam – he assumed correctly that the American public would buy any amount of “humbug”.

P T Barnum

In those days the typical museum was filled by curiosities such as shells, rocks, skeletons, wax figures, and painted dioramas. He added faked creatures such as mermaids, and looked in numerous places for “characters”. Fiction and imagination were not limited, including a 75 year old woman pawned off as George Washington’s 161 year old nanny. As he could afford it, he began to pay midgets, obese people, and others with odd anatomies to perform for audiences. In later years, he created an enormous traveling circus, a model for generations to come.

Homer Tate

A century later, one Homer Tate began to carry on the tradition of humbugging. He created innumerable mummies, mermaids, and freaks, specializing in “pygmy mummies”. Part of the horror of these objects was Tate’s crude work ending up with twisted shapes of appendages and faces. This was likely done because of his lack of training in perspective, but the effect was in great demand by side shows needing freaks to startle adults and scare little kids who shelled out nickels to see these horrors.

A Tate Original

To show that all roads lead somewhere strange, Nick Redfern’s 2010 book, Contactees, makes a case that a North Carolina storyteller may have had a Tate item that he claimed was an alien from a flying saucer. It disappeared after his death, but for many years this gentleman maintained that the infamous Brown Mountain lights were connected with UFO’s, and that he had many personal experiences with them. His shop of curiosities featured the alien mummy.

Nick Redfern

Ralph Lael, North Carolina Legend

Folklorists have long understood that differentiating between story telling and factual occurrences is often a significant problem. Myths can form rapidly and spontaneously among sociological groups that do not seem connected – at least not until one begins a thorough investigation. Some quickly fade with only tiny traces – such as Homer Tate’s oddities – but others become enduring for generations or even centuries.

Had the highway ever been so well traveled that the warped curio emporium had once been a popular stop? The jackaloupe statue – that perversity of taxidermy – an idea of rabbit hell that … some new yet alien creature. Had this attracted tourists? Doug Clegg, The Attraction.

 

Jackie Gleason, President Nixon, and the Aliens: A Legend Born

At Misky, we like a good story. It’s said that Jackie Gleason was one of the best story tellers – but was this one real?

With numerous helpful web sites, and Google newspaper archives, we have assembled together some interesting aspects to this story. We’re not hear to kill a great legend, but we are researchers into antiquarian stories. We have tried to assemble in one place many of the oldest sources of this story, something we don’t believe has been done.

The story has several versions, and has been oft repeated by those to whom Gleason told or expandsed upon it. It goes something like this:

One day, Richard Nixon visited Jackie Gleason at a golf tournament. The friends, Jackie and Dick, were talking about UFO’s and how the locat Florida air base had dead aliens. Nixon said, “Let’s go.” He ditched his secret service detail, something he was known to do in real life, and drove to the nearby Florida base, told the guards there to let them in to see the dead aliens held there. At last, Jackie had the proof he always wanted – flying saucers were real and the U.S. government had the dead aliens to prove it. He went home very late, in a sort-of shock, and when his wife asked him what was wrong, he told her everything.

That’s enough to get the hackles raised around the camp fire!

The story was so good, it was repeated in Modern Drunk Magazine:

Gleason’s second wife, Beverly McKittrick, claimed Jackie was given an even grander affirmation by President Richard Nixon, Jackie’s frequent golfing partner. According to her, Nixon ditched his Secret Service entourage, picked up Jackie and drove him to a heavily guarded compound at the Homestead Air Force Base in Florida. There he showed Jackie the wreckage of a crashed alien spaceship and the frozen bodies of dead extraterrestrials. Beverly claimed the event heavily traumatized Jackie—he couldn’t sleep for weeks and had to double his usual intake of alcohol just to get back to normal.

And what about Gleason’s wife? Here are excerpts of an interview by Kenny Young of 9 July 2003 and 6 August 2003. There is a mention of “Esquire Magazine”, so more on that later.

This morning {9 July 2003} I spoke by telephone with Beverly Gleason McKittrick …Gleason. … and if she could talk about Jackie Gleason’s claim of seeing alien bodies at Homestead Air Force Base in Florida. She said that the book never came out … she was ‘glad to get out of it’ as Jackie Gleason did not seem pleased with her quoting him on the aliens in Florida. She said that there was not much additional to tell as the whole story regarding Jackie Gleason and the aliens, as far as she knew, had already been printed anyway.

“Esquire Magazine interviewed me after our separation,” she said, “and I talked about how Jackie told me about seeing dead
aliens in Florida. I think it was sometime in ’74 when this happened. When I said that it was because he told me.”

“After the interview was published, Jackie was upset about the story being public. He called and said he didn’t appreciate me giving the interview, and that’s when I started to wonder if the story was ‘iffy.’

“The reason I became ‘iffy’ about it is because I wondered if it was really true, I mean… I believed it the whole time. I bought the story hook, line and sinker. But if it was true, then why did he get so upset about it?“

… “Jackie had been out very late one night I did not know who he was with,” She said. “He told me where he was that same evening, he said he had been in South Florida with President Nixon to see some dead aliens there and I believed him, he was very convincing. … After he got back, he was very pleased he had an opportunity to see the dead little men in
cases, he explained to me what they looked like and he was still talking about it the next day.”

Beverly explained that during her interview with Esquire Magazine, she made the statement about Gleason’s claim to see
dead aliens and afterward things between her and Jackie turned sour. …

“We were on the verge of divorce, but everything was okay until it came out in Esquire,” she said. … She informed that Gleason never did deny the story.

This afternoon {6 August 2003} I placed a second call to Beverly Gleason at her home in Easton, Maryland. We spoke for about 15-minutes and I asked if she could recall, for certain, if Esquire Magazine was the first to print her story about Richard Nixon showing comedian Jackie Gleason, her late husband, alien bodies after a golf game while at Homestead Air Force Base in Florida. Beverly said that she is certain that it was Esquire Magazine that first printed the story, and went on to describe how the article was the front page cover story of Esquire, carrying a picture of Jackie and some text regarding UFOs. …

But could it have happened? It looks pretty unlikely. Below are the official Nixon daily schedules. Jackie got as much time as possible, but it was barely a half hour including twice riding with Nixon on the golf cart. Between labor meetings, radio show taping, and a big meeting in South Carolina the next day, it’s pretty unlikely Nixon had time to run off to the air base at midnight.

So, we have to ask, was there an “Esquire Magazine” article? Internal evidence of the story states that she gave the interview before the breakup of the marriage in 1974. Misky research has been unable – yet – to uncover that Esquire magazine. An April 1971 Coronet Magazine interview was uncovered. And a very intriguing People Magazine interview 24 March 1975. McKittrick had “something” on Gleason, it says.

“The title of the story of our divorce should be, ‘How to Live Like This and Act Childish,’ ” says Beverly McKittrick, 42, for the past four-and-a-half years the second Mrs. Jackie Gleason, until their divorce last November … Then there was the squabble over household finances. “Since December 1, he’s only given me $200,” claims Beverly. … On his lawyer’s advice, Jackie cut off all of her charge accounts, and further refused to pay the maid to baby-sit for Beverly’s miniature Schnauzer, Mildred. … What apparently brought matters to a crescendo was Jackie’s 59th birthday and the Jackie Gleason Inverray Golf Classic, which President Ford attended. Jackie not only had Beverly’s membership in the Inverray Country Club revoked one week before the tournament, but, according to Beverly, one of the club’s founders asked her to move out of her house during the President’s visit. “It was because Jackie wanted Marilyn Taylor to be the hostess, and I said, ‘I’m not leaving.’ ” … The last words belong to the lawyers, of course. “The reason Beverly’s talking,” says Gleason’s attorney, “is that she said she’d try to embarrass Jackie if he wouldn’t do what she wanted. And what she wanted was a $2 million settlement.”

President Ford played golf with Gleason at his tournament on February 26, 1975, almost 2 years to the week of Nixon’s golf frolic.

Misky, in searching the huge number of internet stories on this legend, found mention of an “exclusive” 1983 “Enquirer” interview.

So, did two Presidential golf visits, the break-up of a marriage, Gleason’s obsession with UFO’s, his wonderful story telling ability, and two interviews with McKittrick about 8 years apart all come together to create a wonderful legend? Or did Jackie Gleason see dead aliens at a secret enclave in Florida? Great stories no matter which is “true”.

_____
Any images above can be expanded by clicking, or going to their original sources.
Additional references:
www.ufoevolution.com
Pop History
All This Is That #225
Miami News 17 March 1971 blurb about Coronet magazine interview
People Magazine interview on divorce, 24 March 1975

3,000 Year Old Scottish “Frankenstein Monsters”.

Date Line: South Uist, Scotland
10 July 2012

Archaeologists discovered mummified bodies buried neatly underneath a 3,000-year-old house in 2001, but recent studies show that the bodies were composed of parts of several individuals.

Much like the fictional Viktor Frankenstein, these mummified corpses were cobbled together, but they do not now live. However, they do have a story to tell.

The findings provide that the lower jaw most likely belonged to a woman, the skull and neck to a man and the torso, arms and legs of another man. Another, mostly a woman. was made of three different people.

Carbon dating shows that bodies must have been unearthed 600 years after death, and then mummified to preserve them.

One scientist believes that merging body parts of ancestors could represent the merging of different families and their lines of descent.

Historians recall that the ancient Greek philosopher Poseidonius visited Gaul and recorded that the Celts there embalmed the heads of their victims in cedar oil and kept them in chests.

 

 

 

Another Fantastic Review of BLIND SHADOWS by James A. Moore & Charles R. Rutledge

A great new review of our upcoming  publication of BLIND SHADOWS by James A. Moore & Charles R. Rutledge (Signed Limited Edition Hardcover) by Peter Schwotzer at FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND

 

 

FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND review of Blind Shadows:

When a new James Moore book is announced I for one am ecstatic, and then when I find out it is a collaboration with another writer I can’t help but think back to his amazing collaboration with Jeff Strand, “The Haunted Forest Tour.”

Well, folks I was not disappointed, “Blind Shadows” is an amazing book that rockets right up the list of the best I’ve read so far this year….

For the rest of the review click the book cover below.

Monsignor Scott Rassbach Discusses H. P. Lovecraft

Msgr. Scott Rassbach of the Johannite Church shares his love of Lovecraft with us in this interesting overview of the works of Lovecraft. and his life and works. Msgr. Rassbach also tackles the question of why do so many Gnostics dig the works of Lovecraft?

Monsignor Rassbach also has a must read blog at THE EIGHTH SERMON TO THE DEAD

I have met and attended Monsignor Scott Rassbach lectures in the past and they are always interesting and enlightening so when I heard that he was giving a talk on H. P. Lovecraft I was very excited. Luckily the talk was filmed and is now available on youtube. See his very interesting discussion below.

Two Signed Limited Edition Hardcovers by Bill Pronzini Announced!

Femme (A Nameless Detective Novella) by Bill Pronzini signed limited edition.

Hardcover Limited Edition of 400 signed copies bound in full-cloth and Smyth sewn

About the book:

Femme fatale. French for “deadly woman.”

You hear the term a lot these days, usually in connection with noir fiction and film noir. But they’re not just products of literature or film, the folklore of nearly every culture. They exist in modern society, too. The genuine femme fatales you hear about now and then are every bit as evil as the fictional variety. Yet what sets them apart is that they’re the failures, the ones who for one reason or another got caught. For every one of those, there must be several times as many who get away with their destructive crimes...

In the thirty years the Nameless Detective has been a private investigator, he has never once had the misfortune to cross paths with this type of seductress… but in Femme he’ll meet Cory Beckett, a deadly woman who has brought some new angles to the species. New—and terrible.

 

Kinsmen (A Nameless Detective Novella) by Bill Pronzini signed limited edition hardcover

 

Hardcover Limited Edition of 400 signed copies bound in full-cloth and Smyth sewn

About the Book:

Allison Shay was traveling home from the University of Oregon with her new boyfriend, Rob Compton, when their car broke down near the tiny rural town of Creekside, California. Soon after, Allison and Rob went missing without a trace.

Whatever happened, it felt like something bad to the Nameless Detective. Five days without a whisper of contact with the outside world. Long past the inconsiderate-kids stage; long past the silly and the harmless.

Kinsmen takes Bill Pronzini’s classic private investigator to California’s northeast backwoods, where an isolated community is determined to keep a deep, dark secret: why Allison Shay and Rob Compton really vanished.

The real question facing the Nameless Detective: are they still alive?